You Didn't Build It...because I Didn't Earn It

By Abraham H. Miller

It isn't socialism that explains Obama's dismissive "you didn't build that" remark toward people of talent and individual initiative; it's the culture of affirmative action.  As I listened to Obama's silly, if not pathetic, comments, I was reminded of nothing so much as the comments and attitudes of people like him: the so-called "multicultural" affirmative-action students one encounters in colleges and universities.
These are people who, like Obama, earned little except a greased skid because of the color of their skin.  They knew that by any competitive standard of merit, they were undeserving.  The faculty and other students knew it.  And the affirmative action students knew that everyone knew it.
Obama knows he didn't have what it took to get into Columbia, and he didn't have what it took to get into Harvard Law.  Let's face an inescapable reality.  If Obama had great grades, his transcripts would be in a full-page ad in the New York Times.
Obama became president of the Harvard Law Review (HLR) without ever having an article published in it, a status that separated him from every other HLR president who preceded him.  In fact, while Obama was the HLR's first black president, few people know that 70 years earlier, Charles Houston had become the HLR's first black editor, contradicting the myth that black people cannot succeed without affirmative action.  Obama didn't possess the skills to be on the HLR, let alone to be the review's president.
What Obama had was an ascriptive characteristic, slightly black skin, at a time when there were racial divisions -- some real, some manipulated -- that were fracturing the Harvard law student body.  Obama was chosen to ameliorate political tensions, not because of his brilliance.
If you come of age in an environment where nearly everyone around you competed and worked hard to get where they are and you didn't, the way you defend against the inevitable ensuing feelings of inadequacy is to create a psychological rationale that no one, absolutely no one, got anywhere except with a leg up and a helping hand from others.  Their "affirmative action" is just less conspicuous than yours, but the bottom line is that you are no different from them.
When faculty make affirmative-action hires, each of those hires knows that there were people passed over who were eminently more qualified for the position -- people who worked harder and published more in better places.  In an environment that truly valued achievement over ascription, they, not you, would have been hired.  Your very presence is a testimonial that the system is corrupt.
So, the inner voice says, I didn't build it; I know that, but neither did they.  I assuage my guilt by making my reality their reality.  I am redefining success and all that goes into it to conform to my own reality.
For Obama, the psychological dissonance was made even greater when he was granted a Nobel Peace Prize not for what he accomplished, but for what he was supposed to accomplish and obviously hasn't.
There have been calls in colleges and universities to exempt black students from all examinations -- not just standardized tests -- because such examinations are culturally biased.  There has been a heated discussion over the elimination of the AP (advanced placement) and honors programs at elite public high schools because few minorities qualify for the classes.  And hardly a semester goes by without someone calling for grading black students on Ebonics rather than on the criteria of standard college English, the English which, allegedly, everyone is supposed to master in college. 
This mindset proposes that whites made it only because the culture itself is their affirmative action.  They didn't build it; the culture enabled them to build it.  No one builds anything; every creation is a product of cultural accommodation, an accommodation that minorities do not receive.
This is the racial variant of Marx's fundamental concepts of the base and superstructure, concepts from which the entire Marxist critique of civilization emanates.  The economic base -- the system of production -- determines everything else.  That everything else, Marxists call the superstructure.  Consequently, art, history, literature, drama, even science are all determined by the economic base and designed to legitimize it.
Racial nationalists have simply supplanted economics with race.  With race as the base, the superstructure -- the culture of society -- is simply the legitimizing instrument of race.  According to this mindset, blacks and other minorities can't succeed because the system is designed intrinsically to cause them to fail.
With Obama, we have entered a new cultural era, one where the very foundations of individual initiative, creativity, and achievement are called into question.  Obama didn't build it -- and it only appears that others did, because their skin color enabled them to achieve.
Welcome to the new post-racial society, where there is no such thing as individual achievement.

Disarming We the People

By Charles C. W. Cooke

July 25, 2012 4:00 A.M.

When composing their unlettered overtures to disarmament, those who agitate for “gun control” tend to do three things. The first is to ask for a “national conversation,” the second is to ignore that such a conversation is already happening, and the third is to neglect that its interlocutors extend well beyond the halls of power and offices of K Street.

In the immediate aftermath of last Friday’s horrific murders in Aurora, Colo., New York mayor Michael Bloomberg walked this path with a dull predictability. “Soothing words are nice,” he said in an interview on WOR radio just hours after the story broke, “but maybe it’s time that the two people who want to be president of the United States stand up and tell us what they are going to do about it.” “There’s something more important than being elected,” he continued, “and that’s standing up and saying what you think is right.” On Monday, speaking to CNN’s Piers Morgan, the mayor completed the trifecta: “I think there is a perception among the political world that the NRA has more power than the American people. I don’t believe that.”
This last declaration is progress of a sort. Were the uninitiated to listen to most gun-control types talk about the NRA, they would be forgiven for presuming that the organization held a constitutionally enumerated position in the legislative branch and that all new legislation — however mild — was at the mercy of its veto. PBS’s Bill Moyers demonstrated this nicely in the wake of the Colorado shootings, describing the NRA as an “enabler of death” and “the best friend a killer’s instinct ever had.”
In reality, the NRA is powerful only because its policy preferences align neatly with those of a significant majority of the American people and have done so increasingly since the early 1960s. If “the American people” disagreed with the NRA, then they would be wholly capable of calling for restrictions on firearms or of repealing the Second Amendment, just as they banned and then relegalized alcohol in spite of the “beer lobby” in the early 20th century. Thing is, they don’t want to do that, even to the limited extent that Bloomberg claims is necessary. Thus, to complain about the position taken by most of our representatives — as Bloomberg did to MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough on Monday — is to complain that you are sick of elected politicians “pandering” to overwhelming public opinion and endorsing a right that is enshrined in our Constitution. It is simultaneously to reject the virtues of democracy and republicanism — quite the feat.
Undeterred, talking to Piers Morgan on Monday, Bloomberg attempted to recruit an unlikely group to his crusade:

I don’t understand why the police officers across this country don’t stand up collectively and say, “We’re going to go on strike. We’re not going to protect you unless you, the public, through your legislature, do what’s required to keep us safe. After all, police officers want to go home to their families, and we’re doing everything we can to make their jobs more difficult.”

Aside from the fact that this move would most likely have precisely the opposite effect from the one intended — what greater incentive to arm oneself does one need than for law enforcement to publicly advertise that it will be totally absent? — the very notion that the police and armed forces should hold a monopoly on legal violence and that there is no right to self-defense betrays both foundational constitutional principles and the long-established role of law enforcement in American society. In cases ranging from Warren v. District of Columbia to Castle Rock v. Gonzales to DeShaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services, the federal courts have determined that the police have no constitutional duty to protect us. Predictably, this has outraged some. But it is wholly consonant with the manner in which the United States was established. In America, there were no “police” forces as we understand them today until 1835, and their creation by no means negated either the citizenry’s unalienable right of self-protection or the expectation that ultimate responsibility for the individual’s safety fell squarely on his own shoulders. The police are public employees, there to add to the safety of the citizenry; they are not the sole arbiters of public order. To suggest otherwise is to misunderstand the role of government and its relationship to the individual.
It is also to ignore reality. Even if the police were constitutionally required to protect us, in many — if not most — cases they are unable to achieve much beyond cleaning up crime scenes after the event and initiating the judicial process. The United States is a vast country, and in many areas it is quicker to have a pizza delivered than to have an officer dispatched. And even if the desires of the police were allowed to trump the Bill of Rights — as opposed to vice versa — Americans would soon find themselves dangerously exposed. This is one of the reasons that it is foolish to distinguish between what weapons the police may have and what weapons the citizenry may have — a construction of which Bloomberg is fond. The weapons’ purpose is one and the same. The police know this, which is why most officers support the right to bear arms.
In turn, this brings us to Bloomberg’s most telling contention. In February 2011, while discussing the shooting of Representative Gabrielle Giffords, the mayor complained that “every day, 34 Americans are murdered with guns, and most of them are purchased or possessed illegally.”
As it happens, this is the crucial point, and Michael Bloomberg appears incapable of recognizing that it destroys his own argument. The debate over firearms is sometimes conducted as if in a sandbox: Were the nation being designed from scratch with each societal variable up for contention, the number of guns could be set at zero, restrictive gun laws imposed, and the murder rate feasibly decreased. (For the sake of argument, let’s ignore the impact this would have on liberty and the fact that the advantage would pass to whoever obtained other weapons.)
But, for better or for worse, America is not a game of SimCity. There are currently 200 million privately owned guns in the United States, and this fact renders the question not whether there will be guns, but who gets them. As Bloomberg himself observes, most guns used in murders are obtained illegally. This is because nobody who is prepared to transgress the ironclad prohibitions against assault and murder cares one whit whether his firearm is legal or not. To outlaw guns with so many in circulation (a fact of life that is not going to go away, whatever government attempts to do: See “War on Drugs”) would be to create a duopoly on violence, held between the state and the criminals, and leave out the one group in American life for whom the social compact was constructed: We the People.
— Charles C. W. Cooke is an editorial associate for National Review.

Disagreement is Racism

Only those who refuse to consider true facts, truth, and reality would utter a statement or carry such a belief. Where facts do not fit an ingrained and emotional belief, said facts are cast away by the willfully ignorant. These people are nothing more than followers who go with the herd, which is easy, rather than even attempt the difficult task of thinking for themselves. They must truly fear where that act may lead.

Disagreement is NOT racism.

THIS U.S. CITIZEN

How to Abolish the Department of Energy

Dexter Wright

It has been said by almost every conservative candidate running for office this year that they would like to abolish the Jimmy Carter government legacy, the Department of Energy (DOE). Back in the 1970s when the Department of Energy was created the Carter Administration claimed that 20% of the nation's energy needs would be supplied by solar energy by the year 2000. Needless to say that didn't happen. So today we have a Department of Energy that provides energy to no one.
The question is how can we get rid of the DOE? The answer lies in the history of the U.S. Coast Guard. The Coast Guard is made up of the best parts of three different services that no longer exist; the Revenue Cutter Service, the Light House Service, and the Life Saving Service. These services were combined efficiently to create the modern Coast Guard.
Similarly, there are activities that operate within the DOE that are worthy of preserving such as the national laboratories at Los Alamos, NM; Oak Ridge, TN and Sandia National Laboratory in Albuquerque, NM. These National Laboratories perform scientific tasks that are not only vital to national security but also, in some cases, are mandated by arms reductions treaties.
There are also activities within other departments and agencies that focus on science such as the National Weather Service (NWS); but for some reason, the Weather Service is stuck in the Department of Commerce (DOC). Contrary to popular belief we do need the Weather Service because all of the data that is collected and analyzed by NWS is then distributed to the media for their broadcast and dissemination.  But it is clear that the NWS does not need to be in the Department of Commerce.
Believe it or not, even the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) does scientific work, it just doesn't use the data that is collected and analyze for policy development. I'm not really sure what it does with the data other than suppress it.
The way to deal a death blow to all of these departments and agencies is to cull out of these bureaucracies all of the useful scientific parts and place them in a new department, the Department of Science and Technology.
This new department would eliminate the need for the EPA, the DOC and the DOE. Even agencies like NASA could be included so that there would be cabinet level representation and so that rocket scientists would not be relegated to teaching math to third world nations.  Ideally the new Department of Science and Technology would provide unbiased data for policy makers to ignore rather than the biased flawed data that they ignore now.
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News Versus Propaganda by Thomas Sowell

By Thomas Sowell

7/24/2012

 

Since so many in the media cannot resist turning every tragedy into a political talking point, it was perhaps inevitable that (1) someone would try to link the shooting rampage at the Batman movie in Colorado to the Tea Party, and that (2) some would try to make it a reason to impose more gun control laws.

Too many people in the media cannot seem to tell the difference between reporting the news and creating propaganda.
NBC News apparently could not resist doctoring the transcript of the conversation between George Zimmerman and the police after the Trayvon Martin shooting. Now ABC News took the fact that the man arrested for the shooting in Colorado was named James Holmes to broadcast to the world the fact that there is a James Holmes who is a member of the Tea Party in Colorado.
The fact has since come out that these are two different men, one in his 20s and the other in his 50s. But corrections never catch up with irresponsible news broadcasts. The James Holmes who belongs to the Tea Party has been deluged with phone calls. I hope he sues ABC News for every dime they have.
This is not the first time that the mainstream media have tried to create a link between conservatives and violence. Years ago, the Oklahoma City bombing was blamed on Rush Limbaugh, despite the absence of any evidence that the bomber was inspired by Rush Limbaugh.
Similar things have happened repeatedly, going all the way back to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, which was blamed on a hostile right-wing atmosphere in Dallas, even though the assassin had a long history of being on the far left fringe.
But, where the shoe is on the other foot -- as when the Unabomber had a much marked-up copy of an environmentalist book by Al Gore -- the media heard no evil, saw no evil and spoke no evil. If people in the media cannot decide whether they are in the business of reporting news or manufacturing propaganda, it is all the more important that the public understand that difference, and choose their news sources accordingly.
As for gun control advocates, I have no hope whatever that any facts whatever will make the slightest dent in their thinking -- or lack of thinking. New York's Mayor Bloomberg and CNN's Piers Morgan were on the air within hours of the shooting, pushing the case for gun control laws.
You might never know, from what they and other gun control advocates have said, that there is a mountain of evidence that gun control laws not only fail to control guns but are often counterproductive. However, for those other people who still think facts matter, it is worth presenting some of those facts.
Do countries with strong gun control laws have lower murder rates? Only if you cherry-pick the data.
Britain is a country with stronger gun control laws than the United States, and lower murder rates. But Mexico, Russia and Brazil are also countries with stronger gun control laws than the United States -- and their murder rates are much higher than ours. Israel and Switzerland have even higher rates of gun ownership than the United States, and much lower murder rates than ours.
Even the British example does not stand up very well under scrutiny. The murder rate in New York has been several times that in London for more than two centuries -- and, for most of that time, neither place had strong gun control laws. New York had strong gun control laws years before London did, but New York still had several times the murder rate of London.
It was in the later decades of the 20th century that the British government clamped down with severe gun control laws, disarming virtually the entire law-abiding citizenry. Gun crimes, including murder, rose as the public was disarmed.
Meanwhile, murder rates in the United States declined during the same years when murder rates in Britain were rising, which were also years when Americans were buying millions more guns per year.
The real problem, both in discussions of mass shootings and in discussions of gun control, is that too many people are too committed to a vision to allow mere facts to interfere with their beliefs, and the sense of superiority that those beliefs give them.
Any discussion of facts is futile when directed at such people. All anyone can do is warn others about the propaganda.

Thomas Sowell

Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute and author of The Housing Boom and Bust.